


Echo

by story_monger



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-01
Updated: 2014-12-01
Packaged: 2018-02-27 15:35:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2698133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/story_monger/pseuds/story_monger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <img/>
</p><p>Maybe Sam and Castiel shouldn't have returned to the Men of Letters bunker following Dean's death. Then again, it's the closest thing to home that they have these days. Even with the mysterious, ghost-like echoes of past inhabitants surrounding them, the bunker offers a safe place to mourn. To find each other. Maybe to heal. The bunker, after all, takes care of its own. Post season nine AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	Echo

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my astronomically talented artist [alethiometry](http://alethiometry.livejournal.com) and the wonderful graphics she's made for this story. Please go to [her art master post](http://alethiometry.livejournal.com/17210.html) and heap all the praises on her work. It's been such a privilege to work with her; she deserves it.
> 
> Also thanks to my beta, [hhwgv](http://hhwgv.livejournal.com) and her many helpful comments!
> 
> Finally, a heartfelt thanks to the capable folks at [Sastiel Big Bang](http://sastiel-bigbang.livejournal.com). Congrats on another successful year, guys!

                                                                  

 

 

> _Yesterday upon the stair_
> 
> _I met a man who wasn’t there_
> 
> _He wasn’t there again today_
> 
> _I wish, I wish he’d go away_
> 
>  
> 
> from "Antigonish" (1899)
> 
> Hughes Mearnes

Sam returns to the bunker on a Thursday night.

The rain pounds on the windshield of the rattling green Hyundai he bought three states ago from a man who, apparently, makes a living buying and selling POS (pieces of shit) to people like Sam. He’d reminded Sam of Bobby, had Bobby been half a foot shorter and sans a beard.

Sam drives through Lebanon with deep relief; he’s been expecting the car to tumble apart ever since St. Louis. As if to accentuate this, when Sam eases the car into the bunker’s garage and turns off the engine, he hears a thick, wet rattling sound, like someone with pneumonia hacking up their lungs. He pats the car’s dashboard.

Then he stumbles into the bunker, shucks his boots, and falls asleep on top of the covers.

Sam doesn’t wake up until noon the next day.

He stares at the cracking ceiling, tastes the plaque lining his mouth. He can’t remember anything he might have dreamed about. He considers it a blessing.

When the weight of his clothes (worn too many days and nights in a row for him to want to think about it) becomes too muffling against his pores, Sam rolls from the bed. He peels off his clothes, leaves them on his bedroom floor, and walks to the bathroom in his boxers. No one is there to be surprised by him or yell things like, “Jesus Sammy, this isn’t a Victoria’s Secret ad.”

Sam showers and brushes his teeth. He studies himself in the mirror and decides that his cheeks have thinned and his hair needs a trim. A shave wouldn’t hurt either, but Sam is reluctant to handle anything sharp right now. He leaves it and goes back to his bedroom to search for fresh(er) clothes.

He finds the worn plaid shirt that he and Dean tossed back and forth over the years. Sam likes to wear it over a T-shirt. Dean wears it as his inner layer, buttoned up.

Wore. Dean wore.

Sam stands in the middle of his room and feels the fabric between this pointer finger and thumb. A dark brown stain ripples in the fabric. Monster or human blood, Sam’s or Dean’s or someone else’s entirely. Who can say?

Sam dumps the shirt on his bed and finds another one.

After that, Sam recognizes that he ought to eat. His stomach nudges at him for it, and he has that dopey feeling of low blood sugar.

But it’s as if someone has wound him up just enough to get him to this point and no further. He stands in his room, showered and dressed but curiously unable to find the desire to amble to the kitchen.

He sits on the bed and rests his head in his hands. He listens to the bunker creak and groan; old pipes and wood settling that almost sound like other people.

The bunker has no other people though. It’s just Sam.

Two days pass. The rain keeps turning on and off, like someone upstairs can’t make up their mind.

Sam mostly sleeps. Or tries to sleep. Or calls Castiel’s number and keeps getting disconnected tones. When it gets really bad he’ll call Dean’s phone and listen to his voicemail.

In the silence of the bunker, Sam finds himself thinking about what the bunker had the potential of becoming. Back when he, Dean, Kevin and Crowley shared the space (plus Gadreel, though Sam hadn’t realized it at the time), Sam used to imagine Castiel coming to them. Decided that Charlie should join them. Linda Tran. Garth. Krissy and her team. It’d be a hub for hunters on the move and in need of information and shelter; a new version of Bobby’s junkyard.

Sam never shared this vision with Dean because he always suspected Dean would get gun shy over the prospect of something like a happy ending for them. Sam still thinks about it, but now it bears more resemblance to they way he thinks about Jess. It was nice when he believed it could happen.

On the third day, Sam is in the bunker’s main living area puttering over the books and files he and Dean had left lying out the last time they were here. Which would be the last time Dean had been here alive. It isn’t an idea Sam knows what to do with.

He doesn’t hear his phone initially; it’s across the room and only on vibrate. As it is, Sam barely reaches it before the call goes to voicemail. He doesn’t recognize the number.

“Hello?” he asks, one hand still clasping a book.

“Sam.”

Sam’s heart drops through his stomach and straight into the floor.

“Cas?”

Something shifts on the other end of the line.

“I’m outside the bunker,” Castiel tells him in a faint voice.

Sam drops the book and bolts for the steps.

“I’m sorry that I haven’t called,” Castiel continues, and his voice comes out thin. “I lost my phone and I didn’t know how—“

He has to stop then because Sam slams open the bunker’s main door and reveals a bedraggled figure with an unfamiliar cell phone drifting away from his ear. They stare for several seconds. Castiel looks thin and like he’s been traveling a long way on foot. His clothes are dark with rainwater and the hem of his coat and pants are caked in mud.

Sam steps forward and gathers Castiel to him.

Castiel falls into Sam—that’s really the best word for it—and Sam realizes that he’s practically radiating cold. He folds his arms over Castiel’s shoulders and Castiel digs his forehead into Sam’s collarbone. It’s not comfortable, physically speaking. It doesn’t matter.

 

“You need to shower,” Sam tells Castiel. “A hot shower. You remember how showers work, right?”

“Yes,” Castiel nods. He stands in the middle of the bunker’s main room and takes in his surroundings. A line of mud tracks Castiel’s movement, and he’s now forming a wide puddle where the rainwater dribbles from his clothes. Sam’s glad beyond belief for the mess; it’ll give him something to focus on the next time everything’s too quiet.

“Cas,” Sam nudges at Castiel’s arm and elicits and small jerk. “When did you eat last? Or drink anything?”

Castiel side-eyes him like he has an answer but is wary of giving it, in case it’s wrong.

“I drank rainwater,” he finally says. “And ate a sandwich yesterday.”

Sam is tempted to ask for the details of this sandwich, but Castiel looks reluctant as is.

“You hungry right now?” Sam continues.

“I can wait until after I clean myself,” Castiel looks down at his clothes and wrinkles his nose. “My Grace—what’s left of it…” he clears his throat. “It keeps the edge off.”

“Okay,” Sam grips at the back of the chair. “Tell you what, I’ll have food when you’re done cleaning up.”

Castiel offers him a small smile then squelches down the hall to the living quarters. Sam watches him go and doesn’t release the grip he has on the chair for a few seconds.

Eventually though, he moves to the kitchen and investigates what he has on hand. It’s not promising. He’s been eating sporadically and usually chooses anything that requires minimal preparation. After some deliberation, Sam pulls out a can of chili and starts to heat it in a saucepan. He stares into it, arms crossed, and considers that Dean would be expending his relief at Castiel’s return by putting together an actual dinner. It took them getting their own kitchen for Sam to realize how much stock Dean puts—

Had put.

Had put into food. Food as a way to comfort and to say things that couldn’t bear actual words.

A woman’s voice rises behind him. Between one heartbeat and the next, Sam snatches a knife from the countertop and whirls around. A chill engulfs him.

Abaddon stands not three feet away.

“You know how Leo is, though, I wouldn’t beat myself up over it,” Abaddon says. Sam squints, and his brain stops panicking enough to realize that this Abaddon has her hair back in a loose, messy ponytail and is wearing a simple white blouse with the top few buttons undone as well as loose, high-waisted pants. She’s not looking at Sam at all but a man sitting at the kitchen table.

Sam watches, his breath still caught halfway in his throat, as she places a mug in front of the man and then seats herself with a second mug across from him. She tilts her head and smiles.

Both Abaddon and the man have a fuzzy edge to them, Sam suddenly decides. Like he’s looking at them through a lens not quite in focus.

“He was right to give me an earful,” the man says as he lifts his head. Sam makes a small sound when he recognizes Henry Winchester’s face. He’s wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. “I mean, mixing up Assyrian and Neo-Assyrian texts? That’s a novice mistake.”

“Mm,” Abaddon—only no. Not Abaddon. Josie. It has to be. _Josie_ takes a sip from her mug. “That’s true,” she tells Henry. “But now you won’t make it again.”

Henry snorts.

“You’re doing an admirable job of trying to cheer me up,” he says as he scoots his mug closer. “My thanks.”

“Don’t worry,” Josie says. “I’d be yelling if the superiors hadn’t done it for me already.”

“Sam?”

The voice echoes slightly from down the hall, and Sam jerks his head up. When his eyes flit back to the table, Josie and Henry are gone. Sam releases a shaky exhale.

Castiel appears at the kitchen door. He’s wearing the sweat pants and old sweater Sam had left for him; the sleeves are too long and trail past Castiel’s hand. His skin and hair are damp. He squints at Sam, who only realizes at that moment that he still has the knife in his hand.

“I…” Sam clatters the knife back onto the countertop. “Sorry.”

“What happened?” Castiel asks. He takes several more steps into the kitchen and sweeps his eyes across the counters and cabinets.

Sam looks at the table.

“I don’t know,” he admits. He wipes a hand across the lower half of his face and only then realizes that his hand is shaking. Castiel’s frown deepens and he eats up the distance between them in four wide strides, only stopping when he’s a few inches too close to Sam for standard social norms. Sam finds he can’t quite meet Castiel’s face.

“Sam.” Castiel’s voice is low and insistent.

“I just saw people,” Sam tells the hem of Castiel’s sweater. Castiel stiffens.

“Hallucinations?” he asks.

“Not Lucifer, no,” Sam looks up. “Not the Pit. My grandfather and his…the woman he worked with. Josie. Abaddon’s vessel.”

Sam watches Cas mouth the phrase ‘Abaddon’s vessel’ to himself before glancing around the kitchen again.

“Where?” he asks, and Sam points. Castiel goes to the table, scrutinizes it.

“Maybe it’s an echo,” Sam suddenly says and takes a few steps forward. “Like a death echo. Only no one died. Which is weird, granted.”

“I don’t know.” Castiel shakes his head. “Death echoes have a sheen of energy that is…” Castiel pauses. “Well, it has an identifiable wavelength. I don’t sense any of that here, but then again with my Grace as it is, that doesn’t say much.” Castiel clears his throat. “What exactly did you see?”

“Henry and Josie drinking…dunno, tea? Coffee? Basically sitting together and talking.”

“What about?”

“I guess Henry made a dumb mistake and got yelled at for it. Josie was trying to make him feel better.”

Castiel cocks his head.

“No high emotion then,” he says.

“Didn’t look like it.”

“And you haven’t seen anything like this before?”

“Never.”

Sam and Castiel watch each other.

“Well,” Castiel’s mouth scrunches to one side (Sam finds it an oddly human gesture). “I suppose we can investigate it.”

Perhaps, Sam thinks, Castiel would appreciate a puzzle like this. Sam knows he would. It would be something to direct his focus away from the empty spaces in the bunker where his brother ought to have been.

“I mean, it doesn’t seem to be harmful,” Sam says. “Maybe it’s a quirk of magic in the bunker. Some spell that got loose.”

“Possible,” Castiel murmurs, though he doesn’t look convinced.

Sam rolls in his lips before remembering the chili still bubbling on the stove.

“Here,” he says, and moves to pull a bowl from the cabinet. “We can worry about it later. I have food.”

He roots through the drawers for a clean spoon and piles the bowl with the hot chili. He’ll figure out how to make them real meals, he tells himself. Castiel deserves that much.

Sam turns around and gestures to Castiel that he should sit down. Castiel takes the seat the afterimage of Henry had occupied.

“Aren’t you hungry?” Castiel asks when Sam places the bowl in front of him.

“I’m fine.”

“When was the last time you ate?” Castiel presses, not touching the spoon. Sam blinks, then ducks his head and releases a low laugh.

“Yeah,” he shakes his head. “Fine. Okay.”

Castiel keeps his hands stoutly in his lap until Sam has gotten his own bowl and taken Josie’s seat. Sam takes two bites of the chili before Castiel so much as picks up his spoon. 

Sam wakes up when Dean dies in his arms. He stares at the ceiling, still fully dressed and laid out on top of his bed’s comforter. He has no desire to move.

Something shifts outside his door, which is slightly ajar, and Sam jerks to a sitting position. The handgun he keeps on his bedside table is in his grip within a few seconds.

The something must have paused because all Sam can hear is the whooshing of blood in his ears and the ticking of a clock somewhere in the hall.

“Sam?”

Sam nearly groans as he lets the gun droop. He tosses it onto the bed and stands. When he opens the door, he finds Castiel’s outline a few paces down the hall. He’s lit up at his edges by the running lights in the main room; something like a halo.

“I’m sorry,” Castiel says. Sam can’t see his face at all, just his silhouette. “I thought I heard voices,” he tacks on a moment too late.

Sam lifts his head, but all he can hear is his own breathing.

“Did you catch what they were saying?” Sam drops the pitch of his voice.

“No. They were indistinct. I thought they were you at first but it wasn’t right.”

Sam bites at his lower lip. “More echoes? Or whatever these things are?” he suggests. Castiel shrugs.

Then they hear a package of garbled words. Just a thread of a noise, but it’s not pipes groaning and it’s not wood settling. Castiel jerks his head toward the noise, and the new angle lights up his face again. He looks worn out, Sam thinks.

“Hang on,” Sam tells Castiel in a low voice before he goes into his room and grabs the handgun. Castiel wrinkles his nose at it when Sam comes back into the hallway.

“Can’t hurt,” Sam tells him, and Castiel gives him a look like guns are just something about Sam he’ll never really understand and doesn’t plan on trying to understand.

They pad down the hall, heads high and Sam’s handgun at its familiar ready position. When they reach the main living area, another whisper of words snakes past them. Sam thinks he glimpses a shred of movement at the threshold of the door that leads to the basement.

“The lower floors,” Sam mouths, and Castiel nods. They edge down the steps. Sam can tell it’s been raining hard because the air smells damp down here.

“You big fibber!” someone shouts, sounding altogether delighted.

Sam and Castiel freeze.

Someone replies, but Sam can only catch snippets of words. With a gesture to Castiel, they move down the rest of the steps and follow the voices into a side room; something that Sam has to assume was once a closet.

The two men—blurred at their edges—don’t look overly perturbed by the interruption, even when Sam reaches over and flicks on the light. They’re leaning against an empty shelf. One of them, a middle-aged man dressed in a thin, ragged suit, takes a swig from a hip flask. He hands it to his companion—a short, stout man well into his fifties and sporting a tomato-red nose. He grimaces as he takes his turn with the flask.

“Damn,” he coughs. “This is coffin varnish.”

“My old man’s moonshine,” the middle-aged man takes back the flask with an unsteady giggle. He has a generous hint of an Irish brogue. “He used to run hooch in the ‘20s, you know.”

“Good god,” the older man sniffs and rubs at his nose. “How many people’d he kill?”

“Ha ha.” The Irish man takes a deep pull from the flask. He coughs hard, then cuts himself off. He cocks his head, thought Sam can’t hear anything.

“Someone’s coming,” he hisses, stuffing the flask into one of his jacket’s inner pockets.

“My breath smell like booze?” his companion asks hurriedly.

“Course it does,” the middle-aged man straightens his jacket. “Just don’t talk.”

With that, the two men walk right through Sam and Castiel. Sam jerks back, but they have none of the icy grip of ghosts. Instead, Sam experiences a small, warm buzz. Not unpleasant, but noticeable.

When he turns around, the men are nowhere to be seen.

“Well,” Castiel says after several seconds. “Those were not ghosts, nor death echoes.”

“Right,” Sam murmurs. He tightens his grip on the handgun compulsively. “Here, c’mon.”

He starts toward the steps again, and Castiel follows after a moment of hesitation. Sam leads them through a few different corridors before entering a small, dusty room much like all the bunker’s other small, dusty rooms. Sam makes for a stack of file cabinets on the north wall and yanks one open.

“They have records of all the Men of Letters in here,” he explains as he hauls out a pile of files. He dumps them on a nearby table and flips open the topmost one. A sepia picture of an elderly man in a priest’s collar looks out at him. Sam closes the file and tosses it aside. Castiel understands his thought process and fetches his own stack of files.

The next twenty minutes pass in relative silence, except the sound of shuffling paper. No mysterious voices. No Dean complaining about research.

“Here,” Castiel says, and his voice shatters the silence. Sam leans over and finds a picture of a man well into his fifties. The black-and-white image doesn’t capture the redness of his nose, but Sam can still see it.

“George Falwell,” Sam reads aloud. “Stationed in Pensacola, Florida. Joined the Men of Letters in 1913. Specialized in the study of Witches and Spells.” Sam looks up at Castiel. “I mean, it fits.”

“Look for the other one,” Castiel suggests. And not twenty minutes later, Sam makes a small sound of triumph. Vincent O’Connell stares out at them, a bit younger than the version they saw.

“So…this is the bunker calling up memories?” Sam slaps Vincent’s file closed once he and Castiel have skimmed it. “Because these guys don’t look like they did anything out of the ordinary, as far as the Men of Letters are concerned.”

“It can happen,” Castiel rubs at his face. “Impressions of thoughts and emotions playing themselves out.”

Sam places his hands on his hips and heaves a sigh.

“I’m going to dig around the records,” he announces. “See if there’s any mention of this kind of thing happening in the bunker before.”

“You think it might be harmful?” Castiel asks.

“I doubt it is, but I’m curious,” Sam shrugs. Castiel squints at him.

“I’ll help.”

“You should sleep,” Sam tells him. “Your body’s been under a lot of stress and, y’know. Sleep’s kind of vital.” Sam shuts his mouth because he’s not sure where the line is as far as discussing Castiel’s dwindling Grace.

Castiel shuffles his feet and says, “I’d rather not, right now.”

He doesn’t need to say anything else because Sam recognizes the tone and expression. The brain throws up some ugly things when it dreams.

“Yeah,” Sam runs a hand through his hair. “Yeah, okay. C’mon, I’ll give you a crash course of the records these guys kept.”

They replace the files and their hands brush as they leave the room. Sam is sure it’s a casual accident, but he appreciates it all the same.

 

Sam wakes up with a small _hurk_ and discovers, first of all, that he has a manuscript stuck to his face. Blinking hard, Sam peels the paper away and blearily looks over the table. It’s a mess of books and files and a few scattered mugs. Castiel’s seat is empty; perhaps he’d gone to bed once Sam conked out on top of his research. Sam looks down at a book recording hauntings: a last ditch effort to find something that described what they’d been seeing. If he remembers correctly, it had given him nothing.

Sam eases himself to a stand, wincing when his stiff muscles and joints rebel, and makes his way toward the bathroom. Only on the way there, Sam catches a whiff of what smells like eggs. He makes a detour to the kitchen.

Castiel is standing over the stove, glaring into a pan with a spatula held up like his angel blade. The other hand holds a thick blankets in place around his shoulders and head. He pokes whatever’s in the pan like he’s not sure whether it might be alive.

Sam eases into the kitchen, and Castiel lifts his head.

“Good morning, Sam,” Castiel says. He gestures to the pan with the spatula. “I had hoped to make breakfast for us but I don’t think it turned out right.”

Sam approaches the pan and peers inside. He’d been right; it is eggs. The yolks drift through the milky egg whites.

“You’re totally fine,” Sam promises. He bends down to turn up the heat on the stove. “Just break the yolks and mix them up; they’ll turn out.”

“My knowledge of how to make scrambled eggs is largely theoretical,” Castiel observes a little morosely as he swishes his spatula through the yolks and breaks the membrane. The yellow spills out.

“Don’t worry, if I could figure out scrambled eggs in college without help, you’ll be fine,” Sam assures him. He watches Castiel turn the stuff in the pan a frothy yellow.

“The proteins are starting to react to the heat,” Castiel says, his voice a bit more chipper, as the eggs start to thicken.

“Yeah,” Sam pats at Castiel’s shoulder. “Nature’s amazing.” Castiel gives him a look that is partly confusion and largely indulgence. He’s learned to take the Winchesters’ inane phrases in stride.

Ten minutes later, they sit across from each other at the kitchen table, eggs steaming on their plates.

“This doesn’t taste like how I remember,” Castiel frowns down at his plate after a bite. He still has the blanket over his head, and the result is downright endearing.

“Usually people add things like butter and salt and pepper,” Sam waves a fork. “We can try another batch.”

Castiel just pokes at his eggs with an air of resignation.

“You want another sweater, by the way?” Sam asks. “Blankets are kind of cumbersome.”

Castiel purses his lips.

“I like the weight of it,” he says, then takes another bite of egg without looking at Sam.

Sam knows an odd, touchy subject when he sees it. He focuses on his eggs.

 

The next few days, the echoes continue until they become almost blasé. Sam keeps investigating them, though it becomes half-hearted on the fourth day. While he finds plenty about hauntings, nothing resembles the downright benign nature of these things. The memories don’t seem to trend toward anything especially violent, no demon exorcisms or echoes of Abaddon’s carnage. As far as Sam can tell, it’s purely small moments in peoples’ lives. Brief conversations, people reading or researching, people cooking, people sleeping. Insignificant, almost.

“Insignificant?” Castiel questions one early afternoon. Sam is hunched over his reading in the library and Castiel is perched on a nearby couch plowing through _Wuthering Heights._ He has a blanket on his lap.

“You saw the echo today, right?” Sam raises an eyebrow. “Some guy sweeping the floors for a whole twenty minutes. What kind of thought or emotion was strong enough to make _that_ show up?”

Castiel shrugs and _fwips_ at the edges of his book.

“Maybe it doesn’t work like that,” he suggests. “Maybe it’s not based on strong emotion.”

“Then what’s it based on?” Sam frowns. “My bet is still on some enchantment.”

Castiel hums, and then sets his book aside.

“I’m going to make sandwiches,” he says. “Would you like one?”

“Sure,” Sam says, and Castiel looks gratified at that answer. He stands and, almost compulsively, tugs at the sleeves of his sweater so that they cover his hands. Sam watches this without comment. He recognizes it as an act of self-comfort, which is an idea that Sam isn’t sure how to handle in relation to Castiel.

Sam surreptitiously watches Castiel leave the library and considers that the former angel (dredges of an angel? Sam has no idea) has developed a lot of little quirks like that since arriving at the bunker. The blankets, the sleeves over the hands, occasionally hugging himself. It makes something ache inside Sam, but he’s never clear on how to approach it.

_Hey Cas, I notice you’re acting like someone with significant levels of anxiety, wanna talk about how it’s probably caused by you losing your Grace and getting dumped into humanity and extreme stress the last few months and your best friend dying—_

Sam’s hand clenches into a fist.

The subject of Dean has, probably unsurprisingly, not made much of an appearance in their conversations. Sam told Castiel the details on the phone after the fact, and that had been followed by two weeks of radio silence. Sam wonders whether Castiel has already gone through his period of mourning. Honestly, Sam isn’t sure how they’re supposed to discuss Dean normally. Dean hadn’t been himself when he died. His death hadn’t saved anything.

“We’ll need more food soon,” Castiel leans into the doorway. Sam blinks and pulls himself from his mental funk.

“Yeah?” he says. “I might make a run after lunch, then.”

A pause.

“Can I go with you?” Castiel asks.

Sam blinks, then smiles slightly.

“Sure,” he says.

 

Lebanon, Kansas has one grocery store wherein the employees have long ago figured out Sam’s name and know that he lives “somewhere a little outside of town.”

Sam hasn’t made any concentrated effort to get to know Lebanon, but he figures that with a population somewhere in the low hundreds, it’d be hard for him or Dean to go unnoticed.

Which explains why the woman stocking yogurts in the dairy section cheerfully asks Sam, “Who’s your friend?”

Castiel glances at Sam as if asking for him to direct this conversation.

“From out of town,” Sam smiles at the woman—Missy, he thinks is her name. “He’s visiting.”

Castiel plasters on a smile of his own. Sam considers that Castiel might look mildly worrisome with his unkempt hair, several-sizes-too-large sweater and general air of not having had a proper night’s sleep for several days. Missy merely tells Castiel that she hopes he has a good visit.

“Okay,” Sam says as he pushes the cart past Missy. “Want to get more eggs? We can perfect your egg-cooking technique.”

Castiel nods, his eyes darting across the shelves like he’s trying to catalogue everything on them. Which, for all Sam knows, is exactly what he’s doing. As Sam grabs a carton of eggs, he considers that it was something Castiel would have been able to do as an angel. Probably not so much anymore.

Sam pushes the cart forward and Castiel follows silently.

“So,” Sam turns slightly toward him. “What other kinds of food do you like?”

Castiel squints into the middle distance.

“Peanut butter and jelly was good,” he speaks slowly, parsing out the words. Another few steps. “But mostly, when I was human last time, I ate what was available. I’m not sure…” he trails off.

Sam concentrates on the selection of cream cheeses because otherwise he’d do something like throw his arms around Castiel.

“Sorry,” he says. Castiel lifts his head slightly.

“I don’t blame you, Sam,” he says. Sam shrugs; they need to be having this conversation somewhere that isn’t a grocery store.

But in any case, it probably explains why Sam ends up tossing anything inside the cart that Castiel shows an interest in. The guy deserves to know what food means when it isn’t something you scrounge for. When it’s something you prepare for yourself and the people you care about. It’s something Dean taught him, especially in the last year. Sam figures he has an obligation to pass the lesson along.

They end up having to make several trips between the garage and the kitchen to bring in all their groceries. Castiel eyes the old green Hyundai that Sam hasn’t gotten around to dealing with yet, but he doesn’t ask about it.

They have some trouble fitting everything into the refrigerator, but they manage in the end. Sam considers that this is probably the most food they’ve had in the kitchen at one time. Possibly challenged by that first week he and Dean were living here, when Dean dove into what the kitchen had to offer with the kind of enthusiasm Sam had only ever seen in relation to guns and women. But it makes sense in a way. While Dean had stated several times that Sam had inherited the Winchester single-mindedness, Sam always thought that Dean showed the same trait when he decided to care about something. Sam. Cas. The Impala. Hunting. Cooking.

Something sharp tingles along the bridge of Sam’s nose, like it does when he’s been bashed in the face.

Sam sniffs a little too loudly and turns to discover Castiel examining a jar of capers, his sleeves pulled over his hands again. He stands slightly hunched. Sam would like to walk over and unfold Castiel a little. Smooth out the lines on his forehead.

“Do you eat these by themselves?” Castiel asks.

Sam tries to recall if he’s ever eaten capers out of the jar. Then he remembers one of Jess’ recipes, the chicken pasta salad she liked to produce for summer gatherings.

“It’s usually something you add to a salad,” Sam tells Castiel, and Castiel nods seriously. He looks up at Sam, mouth open to say something, when his eyes widen.

Sam instinctively turns to look behind him and finds a man and woman walk behind him. They are not Josie and Henry. Sam recognizes the man. Vincent O’Connell’s Irish brogue has echoed through their halls enough times now for his voice to become familiar.

The woman though. The woman is unfamiliar. Sam moves to follow them and feels Castiel follow suit.

“Vince, you know I hate surprises,” the woman says in a tone that is only half serious.

“You must be the only girl I’ve met who’d say something like that,” Vincent laughs. As Sam nears, he finds that the woman has her light brown hair arranged in curls that frame a wide face and bovine eyes. Sweet, is the first thing Sam thinks.

“No really,” she insists. “Give me a hint. Otherwise I can’t enjoy it at all.”

Vincent’s laugh is long and real.

“Something gorgeous,” he grins at her. She regards him suspiciously.

“All right then,” she tosses her hair from her face. “That’ll have to do.”

Sam glances behind him to be sure Castiel is still present. Castiel lifts his head to look at Sam with a bright expression. He must be having fun, Sam decides, and that’s enough to send a little spark through his chest.

They follow Vincent and his companion down a little-used side hall that, as far as Sam knows, was used to store the Men of Letters’ finances, deeds, and other such information. At the far end of the hall, Vincent pauses to pull a ring of keys from his pocket.

“You aren’t going to get in trouble?” the woman asks.

“Nah,” Vincent slots the key into the door. “People here sleep like the dead. They won’t know we were here at all.”

“That’s not what I meant,” the woman sighs, but she doesn’t protest any further. Her curiosity must get the better of her. Vincent opens the door and gives a flourishing little bow.

“After you, Miss Margaret.”

Margaret gives him a smiling side-eye and steps into the dark interior. When Sam tries to follow Vincent, he is met with the disconcerting sensation of a door that is both open and closed. He presses against empty space, feeling the wood of the grain beneath his fingers. When Vincent closes the door behind him, it matches itself with Sam’s fingers. He and Castiel listen to the fading footsteps.

“Don’t you have keys?” Castiel asks, peering as Sam jiggles the handle.

“Not all of them,” Sam lets the handle go. “But we can give it a shot.”

Really, there’s no reason for them to be doing this, practically jogging down the hall to the main office where Sam knows the bunker’s keys are stored. It’s just another room of the bunker Sam hasn’t discovered yet; there are plenty of those. Still, as he and Castiel examine the keys, then end up gathering as many as they can, Sam senses an air of giddiness. It’s like when he and Dean were kids and came up with ten kinds of dumb ideas while their dad was out.

Five minutes later, Sam is crouched in front of the knob and testing keys, Castiel handing them over.

“If we can’t find the key,” Sam tells him, “I’ll pick the lock.”

Castiel nods and fingers one of the discarded keys. He bumps his fingers along the jagged teeth, smooths at the metal, grips the key in his hand occasionally and then opens his palm to reveal a red imprint on his skin. He has his knees tucked up against his chest, and that makes him look much younger.

About ten minutes into their endeavor, Sam finds a key that slides into the lock with a smooth _snick_. He turns and feels the lock give way. He reaches out and helps Castiel up. They both peer into what looks like a hallway. Sam thinks he sees stairs, but the lighting is too dim to be sure. Sam instructs Castiel to wait, then fetches a flashlight. When he returns, Sam shines the light into the room.

Stairs crawl up into dimness. The air smells stale here.

Castiel walks through the doorway, and Sam follows. They take the stairs at a steady pace, Sam trailing one hand along the concrete wall. Castiel’s blue sweater wrinkles and bobs ahead of him.

Suddenly, Castiel misses a step or trips over his own shoes, because he pitches forward and might have smacked his face against the steps if Sam had not grabbed his arm. He drops the flashlight in the process, and it goes out as soon as it smacks against the steps.

“You okay?” Sam asks, his voice muffled in the small space.

“Yes.” Castiel shifts in Sam’s grip. “Is the light broken?”

Sam has to feel for the flashlight—the stairwell is truly black—and when he finds it, flicks it several times.

“Yep,” he stows it in his pocket.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Sam is still gripping Castiel’s arms. He lets one hand drop, but slides the other down until he finds Castiel’s hand. It’s hidden inside a thick sleeve, predictably enough, so Sam tugs at the fabric so he can tangle his fingers with Castiel’s. He can’t see Castiel’s face in the slightest, so he can’t say what Castiel thinks of this. But then again, Castiel makes no move to tug his hand free. He squeezes Sam’s hand for a moment, so Sam decides that it’s all right.

They have to move slower after that, but it’s only another few minutes of climbing stairs before Castiel pauses.

“There’s a ceiling,” he says, and Sam hears him slapping at the concrete above them. Abruptly, the concrete sound becomes hollow and wooden. Castiel rattles at it.

“Shut,” he says.

“Here,” Sam releases Castiel’s hand and maneuvers himself so that they both stand on the top few steps. He reaches up and braces his hands against damp wood. “Probably swollen shut,” he tells Castiel. “On three, push up hard as you can.”

It takes them more than one try, but then they pop the trapdoor open with surprised grunts. The space above them, Sam notices, is not nearly as dark as the space below them. He hauls himself through the door then helps Castiel wriggle his way up.

The echo of Vincent and Margaret must have faded a long time ago because the room is silent. Only no, Sam can hear a soft rustling and tapping sound. He gropes forward and, as his eyes take advantage of the snatches of light, starts to find large shapes. Desks, shelves, and chairs, he realizes after a moment. Somewhere to his left, Castiel clicks something. The light that comes on forces Sam to screw his eyes shut.

“I found the light switch,” Castiel says a mite unnecessarily, but maybe he knows that and is making a joke.

“Cool,” Sam squints at Castiel, then glances around the room.

It looks like another study, Sam decides. Shelves line the walls, and four desks have been shoved between them. Papers scatter across any horizontal surface, like whoever put them there planned to come back after a quick lunch. The center of the room is dedicated to several old fashioned looking telescopes in various states of assemblage.

The oddest thing is the roof. It curves over them, a great dome gilded in what might be brass. Sam can make out engravings of a stylized sun and moon, surrounded by galaxies, stars, and comets.

“It’s an observatory,” Castiel says, sounding intrigued.

“Must be,” Sam agrees. He frowns. “I wonder how far above ground we are.”

Castiel squints around the room, then makes for a panel sitting next to the light switch. He squeaks it open, examines the knobs and switches therein, then flicks a few of them.

Something in the bowels of the room _clunks_. Sam cranes his neck to watch as the brass, domed ceiling starts to shift, then to split apart. Castiel flicks the lights off and stands beside him, and they watch the sky reveal itself.

The rain from that morning must have abated, Sam thinks dizzily. The sky looks clear above them, and it’s late enough in the evening for the stars to be visible. The glass dome is masterfully done, perhaps built with some magic, because Sam could imagine that the ceiling isn’t there at all, and that he and Castiel are staring right into the open air. The edges of trees are visible at the rim of the dome, and Sam can guess that it had been some initiate’s job to trim the foliage back and allow an unobstructed view.

“I wonder where this is,” Sam murmurs, as if speaking too loudly might break something. “I’ve been out in the woods a few times but I guess I didn’t go far enough.”

“Look,” Castiel’s points. “You can see Venus.”

Sam can feel the smile crawling onto his face despite himself. His neck is starting to ache, but Sam can’t bring himself to let his face drop away from the sky. Castiel stands close enough for their arms and hands to touch when they sway toward each other. He studies the sky like he’s hoping to find something up there. His eyelashes stand out black and his lips are slightly parted as he stares.

“It’s gorgeous,” Castiel says.

“Yeah,” Sam agrees.

 

In the days after they discover the observatory, Castiel starts to disappear more and more often. Sam has his suspicions, but he also feels that Castiel has a right to his benign secrets. So in the hours when Castiel is nowhere to be found and the silence starts to drag on Sam, he meanders down to the garage and starts poking at the old green Hyundai he’d picked up in Ohio.

Cars had undoubtedly always been Dean’s field. But Sam had picked up a few things over the years, especially those months when Dean was in Hell or Purgatory.

(Sam wonders where Dean is now. Whether Sam might still…well. No good thinking about that, really.)

Sam falls into a rhythm composed of grease and oil and wrenches. The Impala watches from its corner like a dog waiting for her owner to walk through the door again. Sam feels sorry for it, insomuch as one can feel sorry for an inanimate object. But then again, if pressed, Sam would probably admit that an inanimate object can still hold a kind of sentience to it. It’s only that the Impala’s sentience is steeped in days on the open road when it was just two brothers and a trunk full of weapons. It had been exactly what he needed in Stull Cemetery, but these days it means Sam has a hard time giving her the attention she needs. Maybe in a few months, he thinks. Maybe in a year.

In the meantime, he tends to the green car that, by contrast, Dean has never touched. It’s a grizzled, old, wounded thing, and Sam does the best he can with it. If he can get this car running again, Sam figures, he can fix just about anything else.

He takes a break around afternoon on a Monday. He sits on top of a toolbox, legs sprawled before him, and gazes at the line of cars without quite seeing them.

Something shuffles to his right and a little behind him.

Sam shifts on his seat and observes two men stroll into the garage. They walk close together, their hands brushing every step or two. Sam thinks that he recognizes one of them—a thin wisp of a youth with a sharp, olive-toned face—as the one whose echo had been sweeping the floor a week ago. The other man is a stranger. He has dark brown skin and a neatly trimmed beard and moustache. His jacket is slung over one arm, and he has an easy gait to him.

“So then,” the easy-gaited man gestures in front of him. “There I was. Two demons in front of me and six terrified civilians behind me. Trap broken, partner passed out cold. Sticky situation to be sure.”

The thin man snorts and hauls himself on the nose of an old Ford that Sam is sure hadn’t been there before.

“You should write novellas, Thomas,” he says.

“I should,” Thomas rubs at his beard. “I have the material.”

“So two demons,” his companion urges. Thomas joins him on the car.

“This is really a lesson in foresight,” he grins at the thin man. “But luckily for me, I had a flask of holy water in my breast pocket.”

“I guessed that.”

“Shush. I pulled it out and tossed it into their eyes. Enough for them to be taken by surprise. Then I managed to dart forward and draw back in the line of the trap they had smudged.”

“So they just conveniently stayed in the trap?” his companion asks.

“They stumbled back when I splashed the holy water across their faces,” Thomas explains.

“Again, novellas.”

“Fernando, I am hurt,” Thomas leans back and grins. “You doubt me, just ask the demons. We’ve got them sitting in the dungeons right now. Father Burns wants to do a little interrogation; sure that you could slip in a question or two.”

“Right,” Fernando sighs at the ceiling. “Because they’ll let _me_ waltz in and chat with demons.”

“Ah don’t get so glum,” Thomas swings his arm around Fernando’s shoulders. “George says you’re making fine progress. You’ll advance soon enough.”

“Don’t have a mind for these things though,” Fernando huffs. “Not like _mi padre_.”

“Don’t need to have a mind for it, just hard determination,” Thomas nudges him. “These boys who try and get along on pure talent and family legacy; they don’t go through all the sweat you and I do. It’s the hard work that solidifies things in the end, you know.”

Fernando looks unconvinced.

“C’mon now.” Thomas presses a kiss to Fernando’s temple. “Gimme a smile. Just a little one. Been gone all week hunting up demons for our local mad priest.”

“Shouldn’t call a _Padre_ mad,” Fernando offers Thomas a small smile. “If my _abuela_ were here she’d smack you for your disrespect.”

“Mm,” Thomas leans in and presses a kiss to Fernando’s lips. Fernando returns it, and Sam ducks his head slightly out of an automatic need to give them some privacy.

“So worried about you out there,” he can hear Fernando murmur. “Hate when they send you on missions.”

“All the initiates do it. I always come back,” Thomas’ voice sounds muffled.

“’Fraid you won’t some day.”

Words drop away after that, and Sam keeps his eyes trained on the ground. He’s about to leave them to it—no matter that this scene happened before Sam had been born; he knows that _he_ wouldn’t like someone from the future watching his make out session. But then, between one second and the next, the soft noises disappear. Sam glances up and finds an empty patch of concrete.

He cradles his chin in one hand contemplatively and remains sitting.

Several minutes later, a door clacks open. This time, it’s to admit Castiel. He’s wearing one of Sam’s sweaters again; the ratty red one from Stanford. It hangs from him.

“Hello Sam,” Castiel says as he walks across the echoing room. He carries two plates with sandwiches on them. Castiel, Sam has discovered, is a great believer in sandwiches. A memory of Castiel in hospital clothing offering them food on a blue spackled plate tugs at Sam’s mind.

“It’s past lunchtime,” Castiel informs Sam and hands him one of the plates. Sam has barely noted the time, and his body hadn’t given any clues either. The arrival of the food, however, prompts Sam’s stomach to give a little growl.

“Thanks,” Sam peels open the sandwich slightly to find roast beef, cucumber and mayonnaise. The first bite makes something pleasant _thunk_ into place inside Sam.

“Are you fixing it?” Castiel asks around a mouthful of food, nodding at the green car.

“Trying to,” Sam shifts to rest his elbows on his thighs. “Not that great with engines and this one’s in bad shape.”

“Where did you get it?”

“Ohio.” Sam pauses. “Um, I was out there on a lead.” Castiel watches him curiously. “Thought there had been some omens that might lead to Crowley,” Sam continues. “It was nothing.”

“You can’t summon him?”

“He’s done something,” Sam shakes his head. “Cut himself off. Trying to summon him just gives me a lot of sulfur and smoke.”

Castiel frowns at the space between his feet. His grip on his sandwich suddenly tightens enough for Sam to see his fingers dig into the bread.

“If I still had Grace,” Castiel mutters. He exhales sharply and doesn’t finish.

Sam studies his plate and considers that if Castiel still had his Grace, he wouldn’t be here eating sandwiches with Sam. He’d be hunting for Crowley or tearing apart Heaven, Hell, and everywhere in between looking for Dean’s soul. Maybe he’d succeed and Sam would get his brother back. Dean the way he was before the mark and before the blade.

That sends a sharp jab through Sam’s gut. Enough for him to set down his food and wipe his hands across his face. He keeps them there.

“Sam?” A hand touches at his arm.

“Sorry,” Sam says in a muffled voice. “I’m sorry I just…”

Sam is glad that Castiel understands him. It means that they don’t have to speak any more for Castiel set aside his plate with a gentle _clink_ and move to kneel in front of Sam.

“Sam,” Castiel murmurs, like he’s trying to ground them with the name. He wraps his hands around Sam’s wrists and gently, slowly, pulls Sam’s hands from his face.

Castiel is blurred when Sam peers at him, and Sam’s eyes are turning hot and swollen. Castiel releases Sam’s wrists, places his hands on either side of Sam’s face. He studies Sam’s face before he leans in to kiss Sam’s forehead, like a benediction.

Sam’s face folds in on itself. He can feel his mouth turning down in cartoonish angles at its corners to try and suppress the hitches that start deep in his stomach and rise in ever growing force. One of them escapes him in a horrible, mewling burst.

“Sam,” Castiel says again. He moves to kiss each of Sam’s eyelids, as if he can smooth them out even though they’re squeezed shut. He rests his forehead against Sam’s and runs his thumbs along his cheeks.

Sam can’t keep swallowing down the hitches; they just rattle inside of him with sharp edges that burn at his throat. He lets them trickle from him, and Castiel responds by folding his arms around Sam’s shoulders and letting Sam press his face in the crook of his neck.

It reminds Sam of how Dean used to comfort him as a child, and every so often when they were adults. Sam’s hands shoot up to grip at the back of Castiel’s sweater, and there’s no stopping the sounds that spill from his mouth anymore.

Castiel waits.

Embarrassed isn’t the right word for how Sam feels that evening. Wrung out, probably. Drained. Ready to crawl into bed, pass out, and not wake up for another few months.

Which probably explains why Sam foregoes Castiel’s offer to make them dinner and instead lands face-down on his bed. After a few minutes he curls into a fetal position, like that will keep everything in place. Things have rattled loose since this afternoon. Things that had, for the past few weeks, been kept at a safe distance.

Sam drifts in and out of awareness. At one point he hears a soft thump and Castiel’s voice asking him if he’s sure he doesn’t want something to eat. Sam doesn’t reply and listens to Castiel’s departure with a sick feeling. Castiel with his large sweaters that he seems scared to remove, his sleeves always hiding his hands, his occasional, embarrassed questions about the finer details of humanity, his tendency to curl into things, his increasing interest in food and in offering that food to Sam, the bags under his eyes.

His lips against Sam’s forehead and eyelids.

Sam shudders out an exhale and tightens where his arms are crossed over his stomach. He should be out there talking to Castiel, giving him his company, helping him avoid the raw, empty spaces where Dean used to exist. ‘Should’ being the operative word. The distance between “should” and “do” is a large one, and Sam has run out of the energy to jump it.

 

That night, Sam floats back into the waking world when something like Dean’s voice echoes to him from the halls.

He falls asleep again before he can think much further than that.

 

Sam thinks that it’s morning. At least, he only woke up what feels like a few hours ago. Nevertheless, someone is playing music. Sam can be sure of this because he’s been following the tune for at least five minutes and has confirmed that it’s not a figment of his imagination. It sounds jazzy and old-fashioned. Perhaps Castiel has found some old records.

Suddenly, a brash, female laugh echoes down the hall. Sam lifts his head properly for that, because it definitely wasn’t recorded. After a moment of thought, Sam swings his legs off of the bed and braces them against the floor. He sits for nearly a minute with his knees on his thighs and his stare directed at the concrete floor. He ought to find an area rug, he suddenly thinks. It would make the room less echoing.

The music is still playing when Sam finally gathers the mental energy to stand and slip some pants over his boxers. He creaks the door open and peers down the hall. It’s dim and empty, but the jazz music still echoes down to him. The cheerful cry of a trumpet jumps up and plays a brash, excited tune. Sam takes another few steps into the hall. Now he can hear people. It sounds like a good-sized crowd, and several of them are laughing and chatting in high, animated voices.

As Sam walks down the hall, he tries to decide what would make the Men of Letters put on music and hold what sounds like a party. Perhaps some ceremony or celebration, though from what Sam’s gathered, that would involve less jazz music and more Latin chants.

Sam emerges into the main area to find a small crowd of twenty-some people in the main vestibule. They’ve arranged themselves in a loose ring, in the center of which about six couples dance wildly to the music playing from a big, thick record player. No one, Sam notes, looks very dressed up. Most wear simple shirts and slacks, or pieces of suits that look like they’ve been worn all day.

Just as Sam reaches the edge of the crowd, the number ends with a sharp _whoop_ from the trumpet. People part and clap, their faces glistening with a thin sheen of sweat. The next song is slower and looser, and some of the dancers move to the side. Others keep going, and a few join in.

Sam stops by a priest and a stout man with dark skin.

“—suspect it was Thomas or Liam who got it started,” the stout man tells the priest. “Harmless, I suppose, but still. Everyone has work tomorrow morning.”

“Everyone is still taking Marcus’ death hard,” the priest sighs, hands folded in front of him. He watches the dancers with pale blue eyes, like chips of ice. “Coping comes in many ways, William.”

William sighs as well, and resumes watching the dancers with something closer to resignation. Sam moves past the two men and perches at the edge of the unofficial dance floor. With a shocked little laugh, he watches Henry and Josie waltz past him. Henry looks like he has not the slightest clue what he’s doing, and Josie is wearing a shirt and pants that, Sam suspects, would still firmly belong on a man in the ‘50s and make Josie look odd indeed. Neither looks perturbed by any of this. They bumble across the floor and nearly bump into several other dancers with laughing apologies. Someone shouts at them that they’re a menace to the safety of others, and Josie replies with a large wink.

Sam can see other familiar faces in the crowd; people he’s glimpsed in echoes already or has seen on file. They all look alive and red-faced now, either bobbing in time with the music or chatting with one another. Sam spots Vincent and Margaret in one corner, she perched on his lap and his hands around her waist. They look a few minutes away from seeking out a conveniently empty room.

Thomas and Fernando appear soon enough as well. They too dance together, though their male-male pairing doesn’t stick out too much. Josie, Margaret, and one elderly woman with her hair hanging in a silver sheet down her back represent the only women in the room. The men, especially the young ones, have made partners of each other, dancing in that loose, free way that friends dance together. But most of them don’t stand as close as Thomas and Fernando, nor do their heads remain ducked together, and the smiles plastered on most peoples’ faces are goofy and carefree rather than enraptured. Thomas and Fernando though. They sway in time to the saxophone’s easy tune, and their eyes don’t seem capable of leaving each other, even when Josie and Henry make another close fly past them.

Sam leaves them to it, again out of some sense of privacy, and starts circling the crowd of watchers. Suddenly, he meets a head of dark hair above bright blue eyes.

“Cas?” Sam stops short.

Castiel looks up. He’s standing beside the elderly woman, his head tilted. At Sam’s voice, he looks over almost dreamily.

“Hello,” he greets, his smile wide. “This is an amazing echo. One of the biggest we’ve seen so far, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Sam looks over the small crowd again. The saxophone wails out an aching tune. “It’s pretty cool.”

“This is jazz, correct?” Castiel asks.

“Sure.”

“I like it,” Castiel says firmly. “It’s relaxing.” Automatically, Sam glances down at Castiel’s hands. They’re out in the open.

“Humans dancing is an amazing thing,” Castiel continues. “Nothing in evolution dictates it, yet every culture knows how to make music and dance.” He looks downright starry-eyed.

“Do you want to try?” Sam asks. Castiel looks over at him.

“Yes,” he says firmly. “Though I’ll admit I’ve never danced in a human body. I don’t think it’d be the same as dancing in my true form.”

“It doesn’t have to be that hard,” Sam says. “A matter of following the rhythm, really.” Sam suspects that he ought to shut his mouth; his dancing experience starts with one high school homecoming and stops with a few drunken nights at bars.

“Alright,” Castiel nods, then takes Sam’s hand and tugs him forward.

Sam follows with a little laugh and a hurried, “I’m not…I’ve never danced properly. Not to this kind of music.”

“It’s a good thing none of these people can see us then,” Castiel tells him. They stop in the middle of the dancing couples, and Sam feels several low tingles as the echoes pass through them.

“Here,” Castiel threads his fingers through Sam’s so that they stand a little ways apart with their hands clasped. “Some of them are doing this.”

They start out with a few tripping steps. Sam’s not sure what else they should expect. But as Sam said, it’s mostly a matter of following the rhythm, and this one is slow and simple enough that they eventually manage a coordinating sway. Castiel looks content with their progress, at least, peering around at the echo with a small smile and bright eyes.

“Here,” he says suddenly. “I’m shorter than you, so…” he demonstrates by placing his right hand on Sam’s shoulder. Sam understands, and places his correlating hand on Castiel’s waist. Their vague sways evolve into timed steps, and they start moving around the floor in tiny circles. Josie and Henry sweep through them, and Sam catches a jumbled view of Josie laughing, Henry grinning.

The song is a long one; the saxophone keeps crooning along with its piano accompaniment. Castiel, Sam realizes is moving closer and closer. At some point, Castiel releases a long sigh and rests his head on Sam’s chest. Sam wants to laugh, but he can’t quite because some part of him wonders if this is Castiel taking advantage of his presence after being absent so many days. Sam looks down and sees that Castiel’s lids are lightly closed; his breathing comes evenly. Sam then bends his head and presses a kiss into Castiel’s hair, still swaying along with the saxophone.

Sam supposes that the echo fades at some point; the record player dissolves, the dancers drift away, and the music dims into silence. He and Castiel don’t care enough to stop dancing.

 

Later that day (and it was still day when they danced, even though it felt like evening) Sam takes time to properly root out the files for Thomas and Fernando. Thomas had specialized in demons, Sam finds, and Fernando had trended more toward ancient magics. But their records don’t specify where they were stationed nor list their projects as most of the Men of Letters files do. Instead, someone—one of the survivors, Sam supposes—had made scribbled notes that both of their bodies had been found in the bunker on August 13, 1958. The day after Abaddon attacked.

Sam slowly sets the files aside and rests his chin in his hands, his eyes on the table. Not for the first time, he wonders about Josie. Josie watching her hands spread carnage through the halls she’d been walking through for years, the people she’d come to know, the fellow initiates she was about to graduate with. He wonders how hard she had fought, but had found herself up against a knight of hell. Whether she was still there when Dean thrust his blade into Abaddon, and whether she’d been cognizant enough to be grateful.

Sam exhales hard and finds himself aching for Josie. For Thomas and Fernando. For all the bright, sweaty faces he’d seen that would be dead in a year or two.

But then again, he supposes, at least they had one night where they danced with friends and lovers to jazz music and didn’t let themselves have a care in the world. At least they gave themselves that much.

 

The dance echo reignites Sam’s determination to figure out where the echoes are coming from and why they’re only showing up within the last few weeks. He’s already exhausted the library’s resources and now turns to the boxes of unorganized paper that sit in several rooms behind the library. Sam imagines that the papers had yet to be catalogued and sorted by the Men of Letters’ librarians.

He spends the next several days there, occasionally accompanied by Castiel, sifting through the boxes and letting himself disappear into the rote motions of research.

On the third day, he finds a simple leather bound notebook full of scribbled notes and calculations. When Sam flips to the notebook’s inner front cover, he discovers the name “Oliver Henson” in neat looping handwriting. The name rings a bell, and it takes Sam a moment to recall seeing the name in a file. He’d been one of the Men of Letters who had helped to design and plan the bunker, the file had said. He’d died of old age a few years before Abaddon’s attack.

Now, Sam flips through the yellowed pages with rising interest. The notebook looks like a place where Oliver jotted down brainstorms and vague ideas for what the bunker would look like. Features it would need, wards someone would have to build. It's fascinating, and Sam ends up loosing himself in the little notebook for what must be several hours.

Sam finds the March 5 entry near the end of the notebook.

“ _Dinapoli still insists that construction of battle room is all wrong_ ,” the entry starts. _“Have sent him to Peterson since the bastard owes me a few favors._ ”

Sam laughs despite himself.

“ _Borys Studzinski arrived today_ ,” the entry continues. “ _Polish. Psychic_. _Knows a lot of the old magic from Eastern Europe; glad he is here. Had long talk with him about bunker and how to ward unwanted psychic attention._

 _“He mentioned that the bunker is built on some very active energy lines, since it’s the geographic center of country. Says that the place has a kind of sentience about it. Asked him if this was dangerous and he said no. Did mention that he could feel how the sentience had entered the bunker already._ _Will need to discuss in greater detail tomorrow. Psychics never do speak in straight lines._ ”

The entry ends there. Sam jumps to the next entry, but it’s more complaining about Peterson. Sam slips through several more pages, intently searching for mentions of the Polish psychic or the bunker having sentience. But the notebook ends a week later and Sam has no idea where the next notebook might be. Whether it even exists.

Sam sets the notebook on the table and leans back in his chair, studying the ceiling. The bunker having a kind of sentience. He wonders whether it’s like the Impala, whether the bunker has soaked in peoples’ lives the same way the Impala soaked in the lives of the Winchesters. The car had been able to give those memories back to Sam in that cemetery. Maybe the bunker is doing something similar.

It’s all deeply metaphysical though, and not something Sam thinks he understands properly.

 

“I’m going out in the woods,” Castiel announces a few days later.

Sam looks up from his book and raises his eyebrows.

“What’s out there?” he asks.

“I don’t know.” Castiel admits. “But I’d like to find out. Do you have old shoes I can borrow?”

“My feet are kinda bigger than yours,” Sam says as he stands. “But I think um…” Sam hates the second of hesitation. He really does. “Dean’s probably your size.”

Castiel blinks once but doesn’t react otherwise. Sam starts down the hall, and Castiel follows. They go to the room that has for the most part remained untouched. Sam opens the door and gets hit with such a faceful of _Dean_ that he physically jerks.

He’s half tempted to turn right back around, except he can feel Castiel just behind him, and that—either out of a desire to avoid a repeat of the garage or as a source of strength—propels Sam into the room. He ignores the bed, the photos on the lamp, the few posters Dean had garnered, and makes for the closet. He swings it open a little too hard and roots around until he finds what he’s looking for. A pair of old tennis shoes that Dean wore sometimes when the boots didn’t make an appearance. He snatches them up, then heads back to where Castiel is still waiting at the doorway.

The door all but slams shut behind him.

“Here,” Sam holds out the shoes. “They probably smell a little. Sorry.”

Castiel does not look at the shoes.

“Sam,” he says in a serious tone. “I didn’t mean for you to—“

“It’s okay,” Sam’s voice comes out harsher than he wants it to. “Just…just take the shoes.”

Castiel accepts them then walks back down the hall. Sam takes a moment to scrub at his face before following suite. When he emerges in the main area, he finds Castiel tugging the shoes on.

“I’ll go with you,” Sam says. Castiel tilts his head up as if surprised and then he grins.

 

The temperature is just low enough for Sam to need a jacket. He walks a little behind Castiel with his hands jammed into his pockets and face tilted toward the ground. Castiel leads them, it seems, in no particular direction. He stops every so often to touch tree trunks and kick at the leaf litter to see what’s beneath. There’s youthfulness to these actions; Sam can’t decide whether that’s ironic or appropriate for an angel.

For the first ten minutes or so, they don’t bother talking. The crunch of leaves and the susurrus of wind through branches do enough for them. Only when the babble of running water reaches them does Castiel lift his head and say, “A creek.” They follow the sound to find a gorge at least as deep as two Sams. A respectable amount of water flows at its bottom, sifting through brick-red clay and jagged hunks of white and orange rock.

“It must fill when it rains,” Sam comments.

They start walking along the creek, tramping through the honeysuckle that grows wherever there’s clear ground. At one point the water below them dries up, and Castiel suggests that they climb down into the creek. They find a slope with deer prints visible in the soft clay and help each other down.

The creek bed is wide enough that they can walk side by side. Their shoulders and arms knock together every few steps; it’s the way that friends who stopped caring about accidentally touching walk. How he and Dean walked. As if catching a thread of Sam’s thought process, Castiel’s hand bumps into Sam’s and doesn’t leave. His fingers touch at Sam’s palm: a question. Sam glances up to the sky, exhales, then slides his fingers through the spaces between Castiel’s: an answer.

Castiel doesn’t bother trying to suppress how his smile grows wider, and Sam finds himself grateful for that.

They walks along the creek until they find another slope that’s shallow enough for them to clamber up.

“I don’t know that we’re going to find our way back,” Sam glances around at the thick woods.

“I’m remembering where we’re going,” Castiel assures him, then tugs him forward. Sam huffs a laugh and follows. After five minutes of trying to remember what trees they’re passing, Sam gives up and focuses on watching the sunlight spackle across the underbrush.

At first, Sam doesn’t recognize it. He thinks that he’s looking at an unexpected boulder in a clearing. As they get closer, climbing a sudden steep hill, he realizes that the boulder glints at them.

When he and Castiel stop before the observatory dome, Sam can peer inside and see the brass cover. There are engravings here too, only these feature Earth. Farmers in fields, neat little towns, rivers, deer in meadows, forests filled with stylized birds and foxes.

“It’s symmetry,” Castiel says, and sounds deeply pleased. They stand a while admiring the observatory dome.

Suddenly, Castiel tugs at their joined hands.

“Look,” he nods. Sam glances up to discover that several men have just appeared. More than that, the dome has suddenly disappeared, to be replaced by milling workers and construction materials. A man with a red nose crouches at the edge of the pit, speaking to a man with a kerchief on his head and a clipboard.

“I mean if I’ve done the calculations correctly,” the man with the clipboard scratches at his forehead. “The weight of the dome will be fully supported. I’m not sure why you’re so worried.”

The man who Sam recognizes as George Falwell stands and brushes at his knees.

“It was custom made and wasn’t cheap,” he says stoutly. “I was asked to be sure things go well today, that’s all.”

“Tell you what,” the man with the clipboard adjusts his kerchief. “Why don’t you go ahead and trust the engineer to know what he’s doing.”

“Yeah Falwell,” a man who Sam suddenly recognizes as Thomas calls out. “Listen to the engineer.” Next to him, Fernando breaks into loud coughs.

George doesn’t look like he knows what to make of that and settles for adjusting his jacket and mumbling something about carrying on.

“C’mon,” Castiel says, and guides Sam to a rotting, horizontal tree trunk. “Let’s watch.”

This echo lasts nearly a half hour, which is impressive. Sam tries to note things about it, in case it gives him clues as to what’s causing them. But eventually he gets caught up in watching the team of workers ease the glass dome into place with a lot of orders yelling from the man in the clipboard and fidgeting from George. Thomas and Fernando, Sam notes, spend a lot of time with their heads ducked near each other and grins on their faces. They look wholly content.

The whole time, Castiel and Sam’s hands remains intertwined.

 

Things settle out after that, like silt in a slow-moving stream.

Sam finds himself touching Castiel more and more. Little brushes against his shoulder, their feet finding each other beneath the table when they eat meals together (which is often, these days), exchanging glances and warmer smiles. It’s good. It does something that eases the twisting sensation inside Sam’s gut.

One night, after a conversation that veers into pop culture, Castiel admits that while he knows the famous lines from _The Princess Bride,_ he has little clear idea of what the movie entails.

“Well it’s a romance and sword fighting kind of thing,” Sam tries to explain. “But it’s also really funny.” Castiel looks intrigued, so that means they have to hook Sam’s laptop up to the projector and have a move night.

Sam and Dean had had plenty of movie nights, and Kevin often deigned to join them. They’d figured out a truce wherein they took turns picking out the movie. Which, as Dean always put it, “means we get a split between the chick flicks and the actually good movies” to which Sam would retort, “right, because _The Core_ is just the epitome of great sci fi.”

“What’s funny?” Castiel asks. Sam clicks the ‘play’ button on the screen and stands to join Castiel on the couch. He hadn’t realized he’d been smiling.

“Dean and I used to have movie nights,” he explains, plopping down and hitching his feet up on the couch. “He picked out some really awful ones.” Sam rests his chin on his knees and watches the opening credits start to roll. “The best nights were when Dean, me and Kevin watched the bad movies together and then start pointing out plot holes. It became a drinking game a few times.”

“I wish I could have been there,” Castiel says. Sam glances over. Castiel studies the screen with his arms crossed and his shoulder slightly hunched in.

Sam heaves a sigh and reaches out to tug at Castiel’s shoulder. He falls into Sam’s side with neither protest nor embarrassment, curling into him and resting his head on his shoulder.

“Hey,” Sam murmurs, and Castiel shifts his head to look at him. “It’ll be okay.”

It’s a cheap thing to say. Sam has lived too long to still believe in rote phrases of comfort and he usually tries to refrain from tumbling them out where they won’t be useful or wanted. But Sam says it now because even the most tired of clichés have their roots in something true. Something true enough for whole populations to recognize and appreciate it. Maybe he can reach that kernel of truth and give it to Castiel.

So. It’ll be okay. They’ll figure this out somehow. They have each other still and that counts for a lot.

Sam presses his lips to Castiel’s hairline. Castiel sighs, almost shudders with it, like it hurts him on its way out.

“That’s right. When I was your age, television was called books,” the grandpa in the movie says.

“I don’t think that’s true,” Castiel murmurs.

 Sam laughs.

By the end of the movie, Castiel is dead asleep. He’s sprawled across Sam’s chest—a position in which they shifted during the scene with the Rodents of Unusual Size—and his breath comes in long, warm streams. His eyes look a little red and swollen, but his hands hang outside of their sleeves, and that’s somehow gratifying to see.

Sam doesn’t know that he’s actually seen Castiel sleep since he arrived in the bunker, and he has no desire to move and accidentally wake him.

So Sam lets the credits roll, stares at the ceiling, and threads his fingers through Castiel’s hair. He might hear voices somewhere in the basement, but at this point they lull him into a sense of familiar comfort more than anything else.

 

Sam wanders into the main living area scanning the headlines of the newspaper he’d picked up earlier that day while on a supply run. It’s largely out of habit. Sam hasn’t had any urge to hunt, and doesn’t see himself doing it for another few weeks at least, but he feels an obligation to make sure things remain clear on his own turf. He owes the people here that much.

Sam catches a glimpse of a figure with black hair at the table and assumes that it’s Castiel. He lifts his head to ask something. The words die in his throat.

Kevin squints at a notebook, one hand in his hair and the other using his pencil to tap out an uneven rhythm against the table. The tablet sits in front of him. It’s such an achingly familiar scene, and that’s probably what makes it so horrifying.

Sam stands rooted to the spot as Kevin pulls the tablet closer and scrutinizes one of the runes on it. For a wild moment he remembers Kevin’s ghost haunting them, but this isn’t the same thing at all.

“Kevin?” he manages.

Kevin doesn’t respond.

“Kevin?” Sam’s voice comes louder. Kevin huffs and absently ruffles his hair. Sam walks to the table and carefully takes the seat across from Kevin. He wonders if he should reach out and touch him. Sam lifts a hand, like he’s half considering doing so, but then he jerks with the sense memory of the last time his hands touched Kevin.

Sam twitches back and makes an uneven sound. Several seconds pass. Kevin keeps working with the tablet; Sam keeps staring. Kevin looks weary and baggy-eyed, but he’s still so alive. That makes Sam’s stomach roll.

A cell phone that hadn’t been on the table before suddenly vibrates. Kevin glances at it then grabs it.

“Yeah?” he says. Silence. Sam can hear someone on the other end; they sound male. “A what?” Kevin screws up his face. “What’s a tailypo?”

Sam stiffens. He remembers this. A hunt in Wisconsin with weird little dog monsters. Gadreel had still been hiding inside Sam, and Sam still thought they were all going to be okay.

“Okay, okay,” Kevin stands and heads toward the shelf of books standing along one wall. “What was the title again?”

“Sam,” Castiel’s voice comes from somewhere down the hall. “Is that you?”

Castiel emerges, first finds Sam, then jerks his head toward Kevin when the latter says, “Yeah, I got it,” and pulls a thick book from its place.

Castiel stares, his eyes growing wide.

“It says here that they’re built of earth and…” Kevin’s words become garbled, like they’re heard through a crappy walky-talky. His outline starts to fade.

Sam stands suddenly, as if he has the power to do anything here. Kevin’s echo fades away like all the other echoes fade, swiftly and without leaving a trace that they existed.

Sam stares at the bookshelf. Something inside him trembles.

 

That night, Sam watches his hands burn Kevin’s life away again and again, like a movie stuck on repeat that he has no way of shutting off. His hands too large against Kevin’s forehead, Kevin’s eyes blinding white and then black pits. The thud of his body.

He wakes to the sense of hands all over him, and they might peel him open, they might climb inside his skin and use his muscles, bone, tendons to torture someone, to kill someone, and he’d rather die than go through that one more time, he’d rather die and disappear into nothing and not have to watch his hands do that again—

“Sam!”

Sam screeches and snaps his eyes open. Castiel hangs over him, his expression frantic. He has hands all over Sam and it makes Sam buck.

“Don’t!” Sam snatches at the hands gripping his shoulders and throws them off. “Don’t. Touch. Me.”

Castiel nearly trips over himself stumbling backwards. Sam fights with the sheets that have started strangling him, and it’s only when he’s tossed them on the floor, heaving and nearly crying with panic, does he look up at where Castiel stands in his corner.

He has his sleeves over his hands, but it’s incongruous compared to the way he has his feet planted wide, his shoulders thrown back, his eyes burning with what must be left of his Grace. He’s not hiding in that corner, Sam thinks. He’s evaluating.

“Are you calmer now?” Castiel asks after several seconds.

Sam nods, even though his breathing still comes too hard and too fast.

“How do I help you?”

Sam almost automatically tilts his head down to stare at his knees.

“Sam?”

“I don’t know,” Sam pants. He blinks hard. He’s still yanking in air and shoving it out like he just emerged from a long time spent underwater. It’s hurting him, and he placed a hand to his chest.

“Sam, you need to slow down your breathing,” Castiel takes several steps closer, and Sam twitches.

“Can’t,” Sam pants. “Can’t…Cas…”

“Here, here,” Castiel is back at his side now, but his hands hover around him like confused birds. “Sam, can I touch you? Just one hand on your back and one on your chest.”

Sam gasps his way through a few more breaths. He should say yes. He should want to feel Castiel’s steady hands. Still, something inside him rebels at the idea. He stares at Castiel and tries to figure out how he’s going to explain it.

Only then, Castiel eases himself onto the bed and sits close enough to Sam for him to hear Castiel’s own breathing. He brings in slow, smooth inhales and equally fluid exhales. Sam focuses on the sound, tries to get his own breathing to match it. He keeps his eyes fixed on Castiel’s hands.

Sometime—five minutes later, ten minutes later—he reaches out and tugs Castiel’s wrists. Castiel watches Sam place the hands on his chest, so Castiel can feel how Sam’s breaths are growing less stuttered. Sam’s hands remain in loose rings around Castiel’s wrists.

“I’m sorry,” Sam murmurs.

“Don’t be,” Castiel assures him, and he shifts minutely closer.

“I didn’t mean to yell at you.”

“You were having a nightmare.”

Sam bites at his lower lip.

“Remembering when I killed Kevin.” His grip on Castiel’s wrists tightens minutely.

“Gadreel killed Kevin,” Castiel says in a firm voice. “Not you.”

“My hands that did it,” Sam feels his shoulders curl in. “Always the same thing. My hands do things I never want them to do. Things inside me that make me…” Sam hiccoughs into silence.

“Sam,” Castiel leans forward. “Can I hug you?”

Sam rolls in his lips, then gives a tiny, miserable shake of his head.

“Can’t…it’s constricting…”

“That’s fine,” Castiel soothes him. “But I can keep my hands here, right?”

Sam nods.

Castiel nods back, then presses slightly into Sam’s chest. And maybe Sam is imagining it, but he swears he feels tickles of warmth beneath Castiel’s hands; a warmth that dives through his skin into his muscles.

“Shouldn’t waste your Grace,” Sam tells him tiredly.

“This is the best use for it.” Castiel’s smile is a crooked one.

So Sam dips his head and lets the heat seep in.

 

Over the next few days, Sam gets in a habit of pausing before he turns corners. If he hears voices, he waits until they fade away. He avoids places like the garage and the main room. It’s the best thing he can do for himself. Otherwise he might enter a room and see himself killing Kevin.

He might see Dean.

As a result, Sam finds more and more excuses to wander the woods surrounding the bunker. He’s relatively certain that Dean never walked out there, and Kevin never died there. It’s safer than the bunker at this point.

Sam is near the creek one afternoon when he sees Henry and Josie again. They show up among the echoes once in a while, and Sam always likes to watch to them. He can tell that they had an easy comfort with each other, that they had undergone enough trials together to build a certain strength in their friendship.

They appear a few paces away as bundles of coats and scarves. Sam pauses when they flicker into view, then strides forward so he can hear them.

“It’s uh…” Henry releases an abortive chuckle. “Well it’s really quite exciting.”

“You’d better tell it to me soon and quit this baiting,” Josie only sounds half annoyed.

Henry grins into the distance, then turns to Josie again.

“Millie. She’s expecting.”

Josie stops walking and clasps her hands. Maybe Sam is projecting the flicker of sadness on her face.

“You’re serious!” she exclaims. “Henry, that’s amazing. Congratulations! How far along?”

“Four months,” Henry bobs his head, and his grin could probably power a small city. Sam gets a funny feeling in his stomach when he realizes that this baby is probably his dad.

“I bet Millie’s over the moon,” Josie and Henry start walking again.

“Just a bit,” Henry laughs. “But Josie, I did want to ask you…well, Millie and I have both discussed it and we think…that is, would you be the child’s godmother?”

Sam’s eyebrows rise as Josie blinks.

“Are you sure?” she asks. “I don’t know nearly enough about small humans.”

“Don’t worry, your job will be easy,” Henry laughs. “You get to spoil my son or daughter rotten and make me and Millie look extremely boring.”

Josie laughs too. As she laughs, she starts to fade.

Within a few seconds, Sam is by himself again among the trees. He sighs and starts walking again. Life, he considers, is an odd thing.

 

“So I found out that Josie was my dad’s godmother,” Sam decides to share that evening as he and Castiel drive into town for their weekly grocery run.

Castiel, who had been watching the black pavement littered with debris, turns his head.

“Really?” He raises his eyebrows. “That’s ironic.”

“Yeah.” The car—one of the reserve cars he and Dean had kept in the garage—bumps from dirt road onto paved. “Saw them in the woods today.”

Castiel nods, then releases a jaw-cracking yawn. Sam glances over despite himself. He’s still not convinced that Castiel is sleeping properly. Which, granted, is a case of pots calling kettles black, but that doesn’t stop the worry gnawing at Sam. Then again, he can tell that Castiel is still circling him warily after Kevin’s echo. Sam tries to let Castiel know that things are all right between them by leaning into him on their movie nights or letting themselves brush as often as he can manage it. But Castiel has stopped initiating contact as much, or when he does, broadcasts his intention either verbally or with body language.

Sam feels guilty that he appreciates it to the level that he does. Some days aren’t built for people touching him where he can’t see it or control it.

Sam sighs suddenly. Castiel glances over, but doesn’t ask.

They do their shopping with easy discussions of recipes Castiel wants to try—he has his list of ingredients on notecards in tight, neat handwriting—and whether the milk in the fridge has gone bad or will last another week. When they check out, Diane, the girl with the streak of blue in her hair, chats about the weather and college football. She calls them by name and tells them to have a good week.

When Sam accepts the fraudulent credit card she hands back, he recalls that this one will be useless soon. He’ll need to get a new one set up.

Sam sticks the card in his wallet with a light frown. He and Castiel gather up their paper bags of groceries, walk out the sliding glass doors, and Sam is still frowning.

When they pull out of a driveway and Sam sees a little placard in the window of the local nursery announcing that they’re hiring, Sam slows the car to a stop. Castiel looks at him.

“What?” he asks.

Sam shakes his head and drives forward. Perhaps Castiel senses that Sam is mulling because he waits as they roll out of town and wind their way through farmland.

“What if I got a job?” Sam asks when they’re near the bunker.

Castiel hesitates.

“Hunting?” he asks.

“A real job,” Sam clarifies. “A legal one. One that doesn’t last for a few weeks or months.”

Castiel fiddles with the hem of his sweater.

“It would bring money,” he says. He straightens. “I was a sales associate at a gas station. I know how to work, Sam. I know how to handle money and…and packaged food.” He pauses. “And slushie machines.”

Sam giggles despite himself. Sam never got to see Castiel at his job, but he heard a few details from Dean, scattered as they were.

“We should do it,” Castiel sounds brighter.

“It was just a thought,” Sam runs a hand through his hair, but he can tell that Castiel’s gears are already whirring. And true, a job will fill time and get Sam out of the bunker. Maybe that’s what he needs; to surround himself with fresh faces and rooms where he can’t see Dean.

It’s something to consider.

 

Sam starts returning to the garage so he can keep working on the green Hyundai. Nearly a week later, Sam takes the car out for a test run. It still wheezes and creaks, but less so than when Sam drove it into the bunker. He decides to count it as a victory.

 

This time when Sam wakes up, it’s not because of a nightmare or voices in the halls. It’s not, in fact, for any reason Sam can decipher. He squints at the numbers on his bedside alarm clock—a little past one in the morning—then rolls out of bed. He plants his feet on the floor and tries to open his senses to the bunker. He’s learned to trust his instincts a long time ago; if his subconscious saw fit to wake him, he’ll pay attention. After nearly five minutes of silence, Sam stands and eases open his door. The hall stands dark and silent, so Sam takes a few paces.

The humming becomes audible. Sam hesitates, but he doesn’t think that any echoes produce this sound. It sounds too familiar.

When he steps into the main living area and squints into the dimness, he can see a darker patch of shadow slumped next to the couch.

“Cas,” Sam murmurs when he crouches beside the dark patch. Castiel shifts and the humming cuts off. There’s enough light for Sam to see Castiel’s eyes when he lifts his head. Castiel inhales sharply.

“Oh,” he breathes. “I woke you.”

He looks wrecked. The bags under his eyes have grown and his face is pale where it isn’t streaked red.

“You okay?” Sam asks. He reaches out to place a hand on Castiel’s knee and squeezes it.

“I don’t…” Castiel looks around. “I was trying to get somewhere. It all…” he waves his hands. “Everything got too close.”

“Where were you trying to go?”

“The stars,” Castiel scrubs at his face with his sleeve-covered hands.

Sam thinks on this for a moment.

“Outside?” he tried.

Castiel shakes his head.

“The observatory?”

Castiel nods.

“Okay,” Sam shifts his grip to Castiel’s shoulder. “I could help you get there, if you want.”

Castiel nods dreamily, and Sam wonders whether he’s really cognizant.

“I’m ready,” Castiel says. “It’s a good time.”

Sam stands and tugs at Castiel’s arm. Castiel rises without difficulty or stumbling. Almost immediately, he wraps his hands around Sam’s arm, then glances up with a questioning expression. Sam smiles. Castiel sighs and rests his head on Sam’s shoulder.

They walk slowly, leaning slightly into each other. Almost like the old couples Sam sees sometimes on the sidewalk. The ones that make him think of trees that have bent and grown to suite each other.

When they reach the door, he realizes that he has no light, but Castiel tugs them forward when Sam hesitates. So they climb the stairs like they did when they first discovered this place: in the dark and with Sam’s hand tracing the wall beside him.

Castiel lets go of him when they clamber through the trap door. Before Sam can reach him again, Castiel has flicked the switch and sent the observatory’s ceiling grinding apart.

“Here,” Castiel tugs at Sam and leads him into the room.

It’s changed.

Sam can make out that the desks and chairs have been piled in a corner. He starts when his foot hits something soft and malleable. Blankets, he realizes a moment later when the opening ceiling permits more light into the room. The entire room has been filled with what looks like all the extra blankets, sheets, and pillows the bunker has. There’s even an air mattress in one corner.

“What...?” Sam turns to Castiel, who looks mildly embarrassed and shrugs one shoulder.

“It’s a place for me to go,” he says in a quiet voice. “When things get too…” he scrunches his nose. “Humanity forces me to feel things more than I did as an angel. It’s overwhelming sometimes. This is less…less stimulation than outside.”

Sam’s shoulders slump. He should have guessed something like that, what with the sweaters.

Castiel walks into the center of the pile, his bare feet shuffling through the blankets, then looks back to Sam. Sam follows him.

“Here,” Castiel kneels and holds up a hand. Sam takes it and lets Castiel arrange them in the pile. It’s like what he’d always imagined doing as a kid; turning a room into a big pit of pillows. Only now they’re one grown man and one millennia-old angel turned human and this is not meant for fun, this is a coping strategy.

Castiel stretches out on a thick, green blanket and lets Sam rest his head on his shoulder.

“Look up,” Castiel tells him. Sam does so and catches his breath.

The stars crowd together in the blue-black sky. The foliage at the edges of the dome has been cut, so they gaze up at the display without interruption. The largeness of it creates a pang in Sam.

“Wow,” Sam breathes, then grins at Castiel through the dark. “This is…wow, Cas. I was wondering where you were disappearing to.”

Castiel is silent for several seconds.

“I didn’t tell you…do you ever feel that you need something that’s only yours?” he asks hesitantly. “Just for a while?”

“Sure,” Sam peers up at Castiel. “That’s normal.”

“Oh,” Castiel exhales. “That’s good. I wanted it to be mine before I was ready to invite you. Does that make sense?”

“Sure,” Sam nods. “I mean, this place helps you, right?”

Castiel hums a yes. “It centers me,” he says. “To remember how large creation is. When I was homeless—a human—I liked to sleep under stars sometimes. It made all my other troubles feel less looming.”

Something in Sam’s chest drops.

“And I didn’t always have a soft place to sleep or proper clothes to wear. Not proper for the weather at least. So…” Castiel shrugs and fiddles with the corner of a blanket. “I’ve gathered that this isn’t entirely normal human behavior and you must have been wondering about it. But it makes me feel more…this body is such a fragile thing, Sam. It’s frightening.”

Sam sits up properly and looks down at Castiel. Castiel peers up looking mildly hunted. Then, slowly, Sam bends down to kiss Castiel once on the forehead. He brushes his fingers down past Castiel’s lashes, and Castiel obediently closes them, and Sam kisses each of his eyelids.

“Cas,” Sam says, and tries to place as much sincerity in the words as he can. “You deserve this.” Castiel visibly swallows. Sam plows forward. “You deserve to feel safe and to have things that are yours. You deserve all of that.”

Castiel gives a tiny nod.

“And besides,” Sam continues. “Humans are really, really weird. We comfort ourselves all different kinds of ways. This is nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Okay,” Castiel nods. “Thank you.”

Sam nods back, then lowers himself back into Castiel’s arms.

“I really was getting ready to share this with you,” Castiel says a few sleepy minutes later.

“I said it was fine,” Sam assures him. “I had things I didn’t want Dean to know about until I was ready.”

Maybe he shouldn’t have brought up Dean, because something in Castiel’s expression drifts when Sam peers up at it. He tucks Sam closer, and Sam lets him. He stares across Castiel’s chest, at the rise of fall of it, and grips at Castiel’s sweater.

“Are you also afraid,” Castiel says. “That you’ll see him?”

“Yes,” Sam blinks. “All the time. Especially since Kevin.”

Castiel heaves a sigh beneath Sam.

“After Dean…” Castiel pauses. “Before I came here. I was trying to find his soul. I tried to bring him back.”

Sam can’t say anything. He doesn’t trust himself.

“But wherever he’s gone, it’s not anywhere like heaven or hell. He’s probably traveled beyond those borders, and there are things there that even an angel has to be wary of, much less a weakened one. That’s all I could discover before my Grace grew too weak for anything useful.”

“Who told you that?” Sam asks.

“A reaper. They couldn’t tell me anything more. I tried, Sam. You have to believe that I tried.” Castiel’s voice is turning thick. “But there wasn’t enough time and the angels are busy enough without trying to track one soul and I would have told you this earlier, but it’s such an empty hope.”

Sam scoots himself so that this time he can wrap his arms around Castiel and guide his head to rest against his chest. Castiel takes the contact like a starving man, and his body hitches against Sam’s. Sam keeps his eyes on the stars and leaves long, heavy strokes along Castiel’s back, because this is Castiel’s turn to mourn, and Sam has an obligation to give him a place to do it.

Eventually, Castiel’s body stills and his breathing evens out again. He keeps his head against Sam’s chest, and after a while, Sam thinks that he’s fallen asleep.

“We might find him still,” Castiel breaks the silence in a soft voice. “Maybe when we die.”

It’s the ‘we’ that gets Sam more than anything else. He’s not sure why. Making them a unit, maybe. A team.

“What do you mean when you say he’s beyond the borders?” Sam asks.

“Creation is massive,” Castiel nods up to the sky. “Heaven, purgatory, and hell are large, but they’re just a corner of all that is. There are…” Castiel pauses. “There are uncharted lands. Wildernesses. The places neither humans nor their gods have touched. If a soul avoids getting shuttled to their prescribed afterlife, they might go there.”

“Sounds like something Dean would do,” Sam’s mouth flickers up. “It would appeal to his Wild West fetish.” He makes a small nod. “Okay,” he says. “Then we’ll go there. We’ll find Dean.”

Castiel makes a thoughtful noise.

“But only after we’ve lived, I think.” He shifts his head to look at Sam. “We have enough time. Dean would expect that of us and I’d like to have a life with you.”

“Yeah?” Sam’s mouth twitches at its edge.

“Mm. You’re so good.” Castiel yawns. “So good,” he repeats with a slight slur. “Bright soul and bright eyes.”

Sam’s stomach gives a little hitch. Kevin flashes into his mind’s eye.

“Dunno,” he mumbles.

“No,” Castiel lifts his head slightly and squints at Sam. “You are. I know you don’t believe it, and that’s fine. You’ll realize it eventually and in the mean time I’ll believe it for you.” Sam blinks. “Dean knew it,” Castiel continues with a fresh force in his voice.

Sam presses his lips together. Castiel looks at him with pure determination. Sam exhales and leans down to press his lips to Castiel’s. It’s gentle and unhurried. When Sam pulls away, Castiel looks more content.

“Yeah,” Sam says. “Okay.”

Castiel releases a loud sigh and buries his face against Sam.

Sam keeps smoothing down Castiel’s back and watching the sky churn above them.

 

Sam wakes up to the sensation of Castiel’s breath against the back of his neck. Short little puffs of warm air and an arm looped over his torso. A leg hooked over his own and a blanket half covering their bodies. The morning sunlight—still pale and fresh—filters down to them and, when Sam twists his head around, dapples on Castiel’s face. He looks at peace.

Sam lies amid the pile of blankets and pillows, feeling Castiel’s heartbeat thud through his back, until the need to go to the bathroom starts to become pressing. He eases his way from Castiel’s arm and, after scrounging around for some paper and a pen, scrawls a note to Castiel.

Once Sam has used the bathroom, he goes into the kitchen and sees what he can scrounge for breakfast. It turns out that they have Bisquick left, so pancakes it is. There’s even half a pack of strawberries left in the fridge.

Castiel shuffles into the kitchen just as Sam stacks the first few pancakes on a plate. He looks between the food and Sam, then grins.

“I like pancakes,” he says in the decisive way of five-year-olds when they say that their favorite color is blue. The way of people who are still unsure as to who they are, so they need to state the parts they’ve figured out.

“Don’t think you’ve had strawberry pancakes though,” Sam tells him. “Those are better.”

Castiel comes to peer into the pan, where the batter is turning golden. He starts to loop his arm around Sam’s neck then pauses. Sam grins, and Castiel finishes the action and kisses at the space beneath Sam’s ear.

Sam plucks at Castiel’s sweater—a dark green one that Sam used to wear a lot.

“You’ve been wearing this for a week,” he says in as nonjudgmental a way as possible. “Want to throw it in the wash?”

Castiel’s cheeks turn red.

“I haven’t noticed,” he admits. “I like this one.”

“That’s fine, it’s just nice to have clean clothes once in a while,” Sam tells him.

Five minutes later, as Castiel seats himself in his usual chair (and isn’t it wonderful that they have “usual chairs” now) Sam places the plate of pancakes on the table.

A phone buzzes.

Sam glances up to find a cell phone rattling across the countertop. He frowns, because he could have sworn that his phone is in his room.

“Yeah yeah,” someone just outside the kitchen calls out.

Sam freezes.

Dean walks into the kitchen dressed in sweats and a thin t-shirt. When he grabs at the phone, Sam catches a glimpse of enough of his forearm to see that the skin where the Mark of Cain used to reside is still smooth and unblemished.

“What’s up?” Dean says into the phone.

Sam can tell that his breathing is coming out uneven. He feels a hand snake up to grip at his arm, and Sam takes Castiel’s hand into his own. Their fingers thread together.

“Uhh,” Dean looks up at the ceiling and leans against the counter. “They have any of those caramel rice cake thingies. Those were amazing.” A second later he scowls. “Sam, I swear to god.”

Sam releases a pained, too-loud laugh. He can see Castiel glancing up at him from the corner of his eye and bends down slightly.

“I was at the store,” he says in a needless whisper. “I reminded him that he ate a whole bag in an hour.”

Castiel’s face softens.

“No, not if you keep giving me crap—“ Dean pauses. “Fine. We need chicken. At least two packs. Think I’m going to marinate them. What? Dude, if you want organic chicken, then get the organic chicken. Tastes the same.” Another pause. “Yes it does.”

Sam thinks that there are tears streaking down his cheeks. He forgets to wipe them away.

“And uh, get avocadoes. Kevin eats them like they’re candy.” Dean tucks the phone between his head and shoulder and opens the fridge. “Think that’s it,” he says. “Oh no, wait, we’re almost out of orange juice. Don’t get the pulpy kind. Yup. Yeah. What?” Dean closes the fridge and puts the phone in his hand again. His face breaks into a sudden grin. “Yeah Sam,” he says, looking like he’s barely containing a laugh. “You’re allowed to get Lucky Charms. I won’t tell the health police. Yup. See you in a bit.”

Dean hangs up, still grinning, and shakes his head.

“That kid,” he says to himself. He sticks the phone into his pocket, then looks around the kitchen while ruffling at his hair thoughtfully. He goes to the fridge again, pulls out a few things, and proceeds to make three sandwiches.

It’s a little ridiculous, Sam admits. He and Castiel staring at this memory of Dean spreading mustard across slices of bread. It’s just so _Dean_ is all. He sings to himself and bobs his head, moves around the kitchen with blatant familiarity, dances a little when he crosses the kitchen to put cheese and lunchmeat away.

“He’s such a dork,” Sam says aloud, and it feels like the best thing to say. It’s practically a love song.

Castiel huffs and rests his head against Sam’s hip. Sam extracts his hand to moves it up and down Castiel’s shoulder and arm.

Dean is slicing the sandwiches into triangles when he suddenly starts speaking aloud.

“Hey Cas,” he says, attention fixed on the food. “Hope you’re doing ok, buddy. Still worried about where you are. Should let me know what’s up when you can.” Dean sets down the knife and sighs, staring at the wall for a few seconds. “Be good to know.”

Sam slips his hand back into Castiel’s and feels how tight Castiel holds on.

Something down the hall clatters, and in a truly odd moment, Sam hears his own voice announce that he’s home.

“Finally,” Dean yells back and picks up the plates with the sandwiches. “Hey, I made lunch! Kevin? You want lunch?”

His voice fades as he crosses the kitchen. By the time he steps from the doorway, he wisps away entirely, and the shuffling in the main area dies away. Sam knows that he and Kevin had both accepted the lunch. They’d been good sandwiches.

Castiel exhales through pursed lips. He looks up at Sam.

“You’ve got…” he reaches up and thumbs at the tears on Sam’s cheeks.

“Yeah, same,” Sam tells him. He’s shocked at how steady his voice comes out. He probably hasn’t quite internalized what he’s just seen. Maybe it will hit him properly in a few minutes. An hour. Maybe tonight. In which case he hopes Castiel will be there and they can ride through it together.

Castiel rubs his thumb along Sam’s hand.

“That was…” Sam pauses. “That was okay.”

“He looked like himself,” Castiel agrees. “He was happy.”

Sam remembers that he’s yet to see a blatantly sad echo. Awkward, perhaps. Mundane definitely. But nothing tragic. Nothing nightmarish. Just people in love and people comforting each other and people being their regular, ridiculous, stumbling selves. It heartens something inside Sam. Perhaps, he thinks, some part of the bunker knows this. Perhaps it takes care of its own, in the ways that it can.

Maybe. Sam has time to figure the echoes out eventually. There’s no rush.

In the meantime, Sam and Castiel hold onto one another and study the empty space where Dean had been.

“The food’s getting cold,” Castiel finally says in a low voice. Sam replies with a light kiss that elicits a low sigh from Castiel.

Castiel’s grip on Sam’s hand loosens, and Sam takes the opportunity to go over to the stove and discover that the pancakes he had in there are charred. He can’t bring himself to fuss over it.

He dumps them on their own plate, leaves them on the counter, grabs the silverware and condiments and joins Castiel at the table. They load their plates with the pancakes and start eating, their feet entwined under the table.


End file.
